Concerns have been raised over the activities in Yemen of the UK’s biggest weapons customer, Saudi Arabia.
Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP

The British government and the UK arms industry have a “politically intimate and hugely compromising relationship” that sees government officials working “hand in glove” with companies promoting weapons exports, according to campaigners who have tracked thousands of meetings between officials and arms trade representatives.

Officials from the government’s dedicated arms export department, the Defence and Security Organisation (DSO), attended more than 1,000 meetings since the 2010 election – more than a third of all meetings recorded by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), which has published data on contact between the government and the arms industry.

The data reveals how crucial the export of British-made weapons and security equipment – totalling £8bn last year – has become to both government and the industry, ensuring that Britain is among the world’s largest arms exporters.

“The government may talk about the importance of human rights, but its role is absolutely central to the UK arms trade,” said a CAAT spokesman, Andrew Smith.

The data also illustrates how the government’s defence export promotion wing, set up 50 years ago by the then defence minister, Denis Healey, has staged a remarkable feat of survival, rebounding from an attempt by Tony Blair to disband it.

The Treasury decided in 2007 to scale back government support for arms exports, then provided by the Ministry of Defence.

“The idea was always that some residual activities would be picked up by the Department of Trade and Industry, but the hope was that there would be a significant reduction in the generosity of support provided to arms exporters back down to the more normal level of support available to others,” said the former Treasury secretary Stephen Timms.

But nearly a decade on, government support for the defence and security sector vastly outstrips other industries. The DSO, now based within the new Department for International Trade, has more staff than all other sector-specific teams combined.

It is “effectively a voice for arms companies at the heart of power”, said Smith.

Last year, the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, announced that the MoD would be “stepping up its role in export promotion”, and the strategic defence review made supporting exports a “core task” and said that the government’s own weapons procurement processes should take “export potential” into account.

These decisions were announced amid rising concern over how British weapons are used by the country’s biggest weapons client, Saudi Arabia, in its campaign in Yemen.

A spokeswoman for the Department for International Trade said: “There is nothing wrong with responsible trade in defence and security equipment which enables countries to defend themselves – but we will not grant export licences that do not meet the standards set out in the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria, which require us to think hard about the impact of providing equipment.”

CAAT says the government’s support for arms exports is in conflict with its commitment to supporting human rights. Smith asks: “How can the government claim to be regulating arms sales at the same time as it is actively promoting them?”